FirstNationalBastard:Second, it's better to see an old, valuable comic like this actually used for something as opposed to sealed in mylar, or worse, locked in a slab of lucite so that it will never be touched by air or human hands again, but will retain its "collectible value".

Wrong.

Do you think it would be totally cool if I used a Babe Ruth baseball card to light a cigar?

eggrolls:zjoik: eggrolls: Great_Milenko: eggrolls: So if it's ok to trash someone else's art to make your own, we should let him make his next 'masterpiece' out of the Mona Lisa, John Lennon's handwritten lyrics, and the Constitution. It's fun to destroy something that's valuable to other people!

Yes, because a comic book has the same cultural significance as any of these things...

The Constitution clearly had immediate value and significance, but neither Lennon's notebook scribbles or DaVicni's work had much relevance or value in their own time frame. Cultural significance comes later. Often much later. If anybody knew what that would be when it happened, we'd still have copies of Shakespeare's 'Love's Labor Won' and 'Cardenio'.

i'm not certain you're familiar with some of da vinci's work.

Closer to them than you've ever been, I wager.

/12 yrs museum curator.

12 years as a museum curator and you don't know it's "da Vinci" and not "DaVinci"? Just because you call the collection of unopened Pokemon cards you keep in your mom's basement a "museum" doesn't make you a "curator"

timujin:Both men gained their fame during their "own time frame," so your initial statement is incorrect or, at the least, very poorly put. Secondly, you apparently know nothing about da Vinci's career.

The_Sponge:FirstNationalBastard: Second, it's better to see an old, valuable comic like this actually used for something as opposed to sealed in mylar, or worse, locked in a slab of lucite so that it will never be touched by air or human hands again, but will retain its "collectible value".

Wrong.

Do you think it would be totally cool if I used a Babe Ruth baseball card to light a cigar?

This is a brilliant statement on the behalf of the artist on the subjectivity of nostalgia. It's as if the artist is daring the viewer to ask themselves the question: What's more important? Nostalgia in its purest, raw form, left untouched and unadulterated or the use of those memories to create something new and greater? To the collector, the comics used were worth $30k because they represent a collectible keepsake from days gone by in the most original form possible. To the artist, they were merely paper that fit his artistic vision and lent themselves to something that, in his mind, was of more value: the creation of his statue. The piece forces us to ask ourselves if the comfort of the security blanket that is nostalgia is worth the value we ascribe to it or if we should cherish those memories but make new ones as well.

Or the artist had no idea what comics he had and just thought they were pretty enough to put on his statue.